The bullying of academics follows a pattern of horrendous, Orwellian elimination rituals, often hidden from the public. Despite the anti-bullying policies (often token), bullying is rife across campuses, and the victims (targets) often pay a heavy price.
"Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence." Leonardo da Vinci - "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men [or good women] do nothing." Edmund Burke

December 31, 2016

Lib Dems say more than 3,500 higher education staff have signed compromise agreements in the past five years.London Metropolitan University has signed settlement agreements with 894 staff since 2011/12.

Universities have been accused by the Lib Dems of stifling free
speech through the use of “gagging clauses”, after the party’s research
found more than 3,500 former staff members in higher education have
signed “compromise agreements” in the past five years.

Freedom of information requests show that 48 universities have paid
out £146m in severance cash to former staff members over the past five
years and 3,722 people were asked to sign compromise or settlement
agreements, which usually contain confidentiality clauses.

The highest number of such agreements was signed by London Metropolitan University,
with 894 agreed since 2011/12. Others with high figures over the past
five years include the University of Exeter with 346, Cambridge
University with 237, and the University of East London with 184, out of
the 48 universities that replied to the Lib Dem requests under
transparency laws.

Compromise agreements
tend to be struck when a staff member accepts a severance payment in
return for waiving the right to sue an organisation and they usually
include a promise of confidentiality, often known as a “gagging clause”.

Responding to the figures, Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, said the use of confidentiality clauses in compromise agreements by universities was not appropriate.

“Universities are supposed to be bastions of free speech and
forthright opinions, yet our research has shown that confidentiality
clauses may have been used not only to avoid dirty laundry being aired
in public but now are just common practice in higher education,” he
said.

“This is simply outrageous. These gagging orders have a deterrent
effect, employers seem to think that employees will just sign away the
right to whistleblow.

“The
cold wind of gagging staff and stifled debate, much in the public
interest, is going through the halls of our bastions of enlightenment
and tolerance. This must end, these practices must be stopped.”

Their use was defended by a number of the universities. A spokesman
for London Metropolitan University said it was “common practice in
higher education, and other sectors, to include compromise agreements in
any voluntary redundancy settlements made”.

“Compromise agreements are recognised by statute, and the standard
form of severance agreement from Acas includes an optional
non-disclosure and confidentiality clause,” he said. “It is important to
point out that such clauses do not prevent the individual from making a
protected disclosure under whistleblowing legislation.

“A confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement is a standard element
of voluntary severance agreements principally because almost all
university staff will have had access to personal and private student
data which universities have an obligation to protect from disclosure.

“Universities often have to make redundancies for a range of reasons,
from the need to adjust to changing student numbers to the closure of
courses with low demand or which do not meet the high standards of
quality we expect.”

A University of Exeter
spokesman said: “During the past five years the University of Exeter’s
professional – non academic – services have been restructured to make
sure they meet our future needs.

“Settlement agreements were used in these cases when staff left on a
voluntary basis with enhanced terms. This is standard practice as part
of employment law and protects personal information.

“The University of Exeter is a friendly and supportive workplace,
where openness is actively encouraged. There are many mechanisms for
staff to raise concerns confidentially.”

A spokeswoman for Cambridge University said: “The University of Cambridge
takes pride in its ability to recruit, retain and support its staff.
Like any large employer, our people leave the university for a variety
of reasons and we are committed to fair and proper processes that
respect those individuals.”

Dusty Amroliwala, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of East London, said some staff had been offered voluntary severance as part of restructuring programmes.

“Such voluntary programmes represent good employment practice and are
often agreed in advance with the trade union side,” he said.
“Compromise agreements provide a legally safe means of bringing to a
formal end the relationship between a member of staff and the employer.
They protect the interests of both parties to the agreement and are
entered into on a voluntary basis.

“Compromise agreements are not drafted to prevent discussion about
general failings that might impact on students. Such failings, were they
to exist, would normally be in the public domain before the departure
of any particular member.

“The university does not adopt clauses in such agreements to prevent
the discovery of any specific failing. Rather, it does so to avoid any
ad hominem comment. The university is a strong supporter of the practice
of free speech. It also recognises the importance of ensuring that
appropriate safeguards are in place to protect both parties to a
confidential agreement.”

The use of compromise agreements in the higher education sector
appears to be much higher than in the NHS. The Lib Dems also collected
figures for compromise agreements in the health service, which showed
they have been used 439 times over the past five years by 44 trusts
which paid out £73m in severance payments.

The highest users out of the trusts surveyed showed around 10 per year being agreed with former staff members.

The Department for Education said it was a matter for the employment
practices of universities as businesses, while the Department for Health
said it has written to all trusts to remind them of their legal
obligations.

“We want the NHS to be the safest and most transparent healthcare
system in the world,” a Department of Health spokesman said. “A
departing employee should never be prevented from speaking out in the
public interest where they have genuine concerns – but it’s wrong to say
settlement agreements undermine that. We have written to all trusts to
remind them of their legal obligations.”

…We
investigate a phenomenon which we have experienced as common when dealing with
an of Italian public and private institutions: people promise to exchange high
quality goods and services (H), but then something goes wrong and the quality
delivered is lower than promised (L). While this is perceived as ‘cheating’ by
outsiders, insiders seem not only to adapt but to rely on this outcome. They do
not resent low quality exchanges, in fact they seem to resent high quality
ones, and are inclined to ostracise and avoid dealing with agents who deliver
high quality… They develop a set of oblique social norms to sustain their
preferred equilibrium when threatened by intrusions of high quality. We argue
that cooperation is not always for the better: high quality collective outcomes
are not only endangered by self-interested individual defectors, but by
‘cartels’ of mutually satisfied mediocrities…

We
have spent our academic careers abroad, Gloria in France and Diego in Britain. Over
this long period of time each of us has had over a hundred professional
dealings with our compatriots in Italy – academics, publishers, journals,
newspapers, public and private institutions. It is not an exaggeration to say
that 95% of the times something went wrong. Not catastrophically wrong, but
wrong nonetheless. Sometimes what goes wrong is timing, things do not happen
when they are supposed to happen. Or they happen in a different form from that
which was planned or are simply cancelled. Workshops have twice or half as many
people as one was told to expect, the time allocated to speak is halved or
doubled, proofs are not properly revised or mixed up, people do not show up at
meetings or show up unannounced, messages get lost, reimbursements are delayed,
decreased or forgotten altogether. This experience now extends to internet
dealings: relative to those in other countries, Italians websites are
scruffier, often do not work properly, remain incomplete or are not updated,
messages bounce back, e-mail addresses change with dramatic frequency, and
files are virus-ridden.

…Two
persons agree to trade some units of good x for some units of good y (goods is
to be intended in the most generic sense, and to include intangible resources; x
and y can also be the same ‘good’ as when two people agree to meet, the good
being showing up at a given place at a given time). Assume for simplicity that
goods can be produced at two levels of quality, High (H) and Low (L). H is both
more rewarding to receive and more costly to produce than L; H takes more time,
effort, skills and organisation. This excludes goods that have only one level
of quality – if one pays to have someone murdered, one will regard a non-lethal
wounding as a failure to deliver.

There
might be domains in which H-ness is undefined, such as an intellectual
contribution to a theory which cannot even be proven wrong, or art and fashion
in which the lack of objective criteria of quality make H unfathomable. We will
limit ourselves to consider cases in which the criteria to establish H-ness are
not controversial…

…Problems arise if the two individuals agree on H
but one of them delivers L. This is, of course, a risk of many exchanges:
rational, unprincipled and self-interested agents prefer to dish out L rather
than H, while at the same time, one would think, they also prefer to receive H
rather than L. Dishonest second-hand car dealers prefer to sell a lemon while
charging an H-price. This happens often enough. And it is what happened to us
many time. We delivered H and got L, the sucker’s payoff. One of us has now
become very cautious before dealing professionally with his old compatriots while
the other has started to dish out the occasional L herself…

Our
impression, however, is that when the type of Italians we encounter deal with one
another, there is no great tension over these mishaps: both parties agree on H
and both deliver L. On the face of it, it looks as if they sell each other a
lemon, and yet:

•
Nobody seems to complain.

•
When we got L in return for giving H and complained, the L-party seemed more annoyed
than apologetic. They seem to treat this as excessive fussiness.

•
H-doers do not seem to receive much admiration, quite the contrary, they elicit
suspicion. As an Italian university ‘barone’ once put it, “You don’t understand
Diego, when you are good [at your work] you must apologise”.

•
‘Italians’ end up in LL even if they are playing a repeated game and plan to
trade with each other in the future. In other words, they are not deterred from
dealing with each other again and do not expect the other party to be deterred
by getting L.

•
They do not abandon the H-rhetoric, and, more or less explicitly, keep
promising high standards.

•
A feeling of familiarity develops among L-doers: L-prone people recognise other
L-prone people as familiar, as ‘friends’.

…to
the raw payoffs of free-riding we must prefer to avoid the embarrassment of being
seen as a free-rider or the discomfort of being made to feel of inferior quality
or both – emotions that would be triggered if the other party gave us H while
we saddle them with L. By contrast, when both parties tacitly accept a
“discount” they are not cheating each other. Rather, they are entering a
relation whose advantages for each depend on the reciprocal tolerance of
L-ness. Not only you want pressapochismo for yourself, you also want it in
others.

…we
need to have some prior knowledge, obtained either through direct experience or
vicariously, that “this is how things work”; in other words we need to expect
both that our partners in the exchange are, say, likely not to pay as well or
as promptly as they say they will, and, on the other hand, that they are not
likely to resent it if we fail to deliver a perfect H…

…In
one respect, the type of person who prefers LL to LH is like the types with the
other two preference rankings: they all prefer to put less effort in what they
do and deliver L rather than H. None of them likes to do H for its own sake.
But in another respect the type that prefers LL to LH is different for he is
not the purely self-interested individual, the one who always prefers H for
himself regardless of other people’s feelings and judgments, but, while equally
‘lazy’, our L-doer is a “pro-social” type who, to the advantage of maximizing
purely his interests (LH), prefers a mediocre payoff provided that he does not
suffer embarrassment or discomfort (LL). They dread being the only sinner
around.

One-off
encounters may suffice to set off these emotions and make L-doers happier to
receive an L even from a stranger. Naturally, if the two parties are not interacting
just once and envisage a string of future exchanges, the potential force of these
negative emotions could intensify. If we dislike being made to feel that we are
exploiting a stranger, we would dislike even more to be seen to be exploiting a
familiar person…

…When these conditions obtain, people expect
rather than just accept a certain amount of L-ness. Usually, if one promises to
deliver H and delivers L instead, one would think of this as a breach of trust.
But in our case it looks as if they rely on each other not to be entirely
trustworthy, they trust their untrustworthiness. Not only do they live with each
other’s laxness, but expect it: I trust you not to keep your promises in full
because I want to be free not to keep mine and not to feel bad about it. There
seems to be a double deal: an official pact in which both declare their
intention to exchange H-goods, and a tacit accord whereby discounts are not
only allowed but expected. It becomes a form of tacit mutual connivance on
L-ness…

…It follows that L-doers will try to establish
the – perverse – trustworthiness of others with whom they are considering to
interact. They will look for signs of L-ness and select as partners only those
that emit credible ones. And, for their part, L-doers will endeavour to signal
their L-ness to persuade other L-doers of their trustworthiness. Anyone who
gives an indication of liking H-ness, of not being a committed L-doer, will be
shunned. We can expect that L-doers will try to avoid dealing with H-doers…

…A
major problem of selecting people for their L-trustworthiness is that the most credible
signs of it are emitted by those who not only choose L as a strategy and could under
different conditions revert to H-doing, but by those who can only do L: the
best way to persuade others that one is lax and incompetent, and thus a good
‘friend’, is not by pretending but by truly being lax and incompetent – by
being a genuine L-type. This contributes to the inverse meritocratic selection,
a phenomenon sadly rife in Italy. The custom police secretly recorded the
conversations between Paolo Rizzon, chair of cardiology in Bari, and other
colleagues involved in university appointment committees, among them Mario
Mariani, cardiologist in Pisa. Rizzon can be heard boasting to Mariani: “He was
the best and we screwed him!” He refers to Eugenio Picano, a candidate whose
impact score in terms of citations of scientific articles was nearly six times
greater than the next best candidate who got the job. Inverse selection is
endemic in Italian academia, and much of it occurs because of corruption and nepotism.
But the selection of L-doers rather than H-doers can arguably be sustained by the
desire to keep L-doers strong and unchallenged…

…A key feature of our situation is that the
dominance of LL preferences remains veiled by the H-rhetoric. Both parties
collude by engaging in a sort of “joint mimicry” and pass themselves off as H-doers.
A teacher who pretends to teach, benefits from students who pretend to learn,
and vice versa. By jointly mimicking H, both parties may aim at fooling
outsiders, or simply fool themselves into sustaining a self-image of better
quality.

The
fact that people prefer LL exchanges while paying lip service to H-ness makes
our situation different from the transparent mutually agreed exchange of lower quality
goods that we mentioned at the onset. In the latter case there is no H-façade. There
is also, more importantly, no externality, both parties get what they expect
and no one else suffers from L being exchanged. While in our case, at the very
least, the credibility of H-promises is undermined. If, in addition, our
exchanging characters work for an institution that purports to be delivering an
H-service, the value of the institution’s service will be tacitly eroded by
each LL exchange, as a school in which both teachers and students pretend to be
teaching and learning respectively…

…When
the value of a good depends on its H-image rather than on their actual H-ness,
and the image can partially resist the erosion caused by low quality, then
there is an advantage to keep up the H-façade. There exists a fraudulent
business in Southern Italy of adulterated olive oil made up mixing hazelnut and
sunflower-seed oil, sold under the label “extra-virgin olive oil”. When
Leonardo Marseglia – director of the Casa Olearia company in Apulia – was
charged with contraband and fraud against European Union (and then acquitted)
for having sold bogus oil under the label “extra virgin”, he justified himself
in an interview by arguing that thanks to his adulterated oil many people could
afford to buy oil with the label “extra virgin” at a reasonable price. Some
people, he claimed, are interested in having at least the image of H-ness. “We
pretend to buy good olive oil and you pretend to sell it”. (In zoologists’
jargon this is a case of “cooperative mimicry”, in which those who are
apparently fooled cooperate with the mimic, with a view to fooling someone
else.)…

L-doers
may want to keep up a credible façade with their surrounding Hcommunities because
they gain from this: Marseglia had an interest to pretend to comply with EU
community standards because he was receiving EU oliveoil subsidies. Also,
L-doers manoeuvre to prop up their reputation for H ness with their naïve local
audiences by being seen standing shoulders to shoulders – briefly but as noisily
as possible to be heard far and wide – with H-doers, as in the case of
L-universities liberally dishing out honoris causa degrees. And which
distinguished scholar would want a degree honoris causa from a University that
frankly admitted to having abysmal standards? Finally, the maintenance of an
H-façade may simply satisfy the need to reduce the cognitive dissonance between
what one practices and what one preaches. The gap between the H-standards and
the L-standards creates uneasiness among L-doers. Even if they cultivate
specious legitimising reasons to practice L-ness (as we shall see below), many
still seem aware that there is another set of reasons, which enjoin one to do
H. The dissonance is reduced by interacting always with the same people, whom
one can trust for not challenging one’s standards. L-doers segregate themselves
in mutual admiration societies…

…One
might suspect that L-doers are similar to those who in schools or factories gang
up against those who work better and harder than they do, in general against those
who keep up or raise standards of performance making the rest look like worse performers
or forcing them to increase their own standards. Especially when the rewards
are insensitive to the quality of performance – e.g. the salary at the end of
the month is the same – there is no point producing at H level of quality. There
are certainly elements in common between our case and this case. Agents form a
cartel by agreeing to produce L and punish those who produce H for they break the
agreement. For anti-stakhanovites as well as for our L-doers, doing L amounts
to doing H with respect to their cartel agreement…

…This
L-norm may occupy a conceptual space similar to “amoral familism”, a set of
practices and beliefs that E. C. Banfield (1958) identified in southern Italy
as being the source of lack of economic and cultural development. In his
fieldwork in Montegrano, a fictitious name he coined for a poor southern
Italian village of 3,400 people, Banfield explained the extreme poverty and
backwardness of the village by a lack of cooperation due to the ethos of its
inhabitants of “maximizing the material short-run advantage of the nuclear
family” and discounting any moral consideration for the whole community. In our
case, we have a similar social norm that encourages people to maximize the short
run advantage of a connivance relation that tolerates side-interests and
LL-preferences, while avoiding a form of HH-cooperation, which, while more
individually demanding, would be beneficial for the whole community (having a
high level of teaching at the university, publishing high quality papers, etc.)…

… There might be a sort of disposition to
develop amoral-familistic relationships outside the family, with people who
become “familiar” thanks to a shared proneness towards LL exchanges. In our
case it is the L-disposition that creates the familiarity…

…Our basic point so far can be summed up thus: if
you give me L but in return you tolerate my L we collude on L-ness, we become
friends in L-ness, just like friends we tolerate each other’s weaknesses. But
if you give me H that leaves you free to disclose my L-ness and complain about
it. So you are not my friend, I fear and resent you, and if I cannot punish you
for producing H, at least I avoid dealing with you. While in an ordinary world
it is L-doers who are punished by avoidance and exclusion, in an L dominated world
it is H-doers who are ostracised. Essentially, the L-exchange can be seen as a
cartel of mediocrities who pretend to be H...

…
The payoffs can be tilted in favour of L-ness endogenously, by coalitions of L
doers who join forces to sanction H-doers and to reward each other. In turn,
this is frequency dependent: coalitions of L-doers are more likely to emerge
the higher the number of “naturally born” L doers, of real L-types who are
smart enough to join forces and gain power. When the number of H-doers is low,
H-doers find it harder to meet, interact and reward each other generating
virtuous circles. Part of the explanation for the emergence of LL-dominance is
endogenous.

…We can expect L- cartels to develop where either or both following conditions obtain:

•
Rewards have a weak sensitivity to H-ness, such as when jobs are ultra-safe,
salaries flat, upward mobility has barriers, and friendship-based promotions
dominate over merit based ones. The only H-doers left will be those driven by
principle, by intrinsic motivations – the inveterate perfectionists.

•
Punishments for L-doers are low, or have a low probability of being meted out or
are negotiable; where “forgive” dominates “punish”, where, to jest, catholic
sanctity fattens skulduggery…

…Social norms,
in the dominant interpretation, would exist as an antidote to our natural antisocial
proclivities. The interest of our case is to suggest that this distinction does
not stand up, and that those whom we think of as free-riders too operate within
a normative structure – a special “cement of society” that glues L-doers
together to the detriment of the common good…

December 19, 2016

Stephen Hinton wouldn’t leave her alone. After Michelle Karnes
politely rejected the Stanford professor and former dean, according to
her complaint, he didn’t back down.

It was July 2012, and he allegedly told Karnes, then an untenured
professor, that he had a “crush” on her and was “tormented” by his
feelings. She said she made clear she didn’t want further contact. But
Hinton – a powerful faculty member who had hired her – allegedly
continued to confront her at the gym, telling her he wasn’t “stalking”,
but wanted to talk.

“I just wanted to crawl out of my skin, I was so uncomfortable,” Karnes, 42, said in an interview. “I was really scared.”

A university investigation of Karnes’ sexual harassment complaint
concluded that Hinton, who is 20 years older, had made an “unwanted
sexual advance”, but it’s unclear if the professor faced any
consequences. On the contrary, Karnes says that administrators
retaliated against her for speaking up and pushed her out of Stanford.

Hinton vigorously denied the allegations, claiming they had a
“platonic, reciprocal relationship” and pointing out that a university
investigation concluded his conduct did not constitute sexual
harassment.

From Karnes’ perspective, however, the university went to great
lengths to protect a senior faculty member and silence his accuser,
prioritizing the institution’s reputation over her wellbeing.

Karnes’ story boosts the claims of Stanford students and faculty who argue that the institution has policies and a broader culture that systematically fail to acknowledge the problem, leading administrators to punish victims while not holding perpetrators accountable...

December 16, 2016

The pursuit of excellence at one of the UK’s top universities has
helped to create a culture of bullying, discrimination and fear,
according to a report.

The report, based on a year-long research project at Imperial College London,
heard that staff at the institution are too scared to speak out about
problems, leaving them vulnerable, unheard or undermined.

Imperial’s provost, James Stirling, said that the institution must do better and was committed to gender equality.

The institution commissioned researchers from the University of Sussex’s
Centre for Gender Studies to look at gender equality at the institution
because of events at student Varsity rugby matches last year.

The university apologised to the women’s rugby team after they were
left playing to an empty stadium when the coaches ferrying spectators
back to campus were allowed to leave early.
The team had alleged that they were treated unfairly compared with
the men’s team and that a member of staff was overheard saying that they
did not care “how those fat girls” got home, although an investigation
found no evidence of the verbal abuse.

The research project
collected data from almost 250 staff and students through in-depth
interviews, focus groups, an open text survey and an anonymous blog. The
researchers also used documentary analysis and observations at the
college.

The full report has not been made public but an 11-page review
document was circulated among staff by email on 9 December and has been
published on Imperial's website.

It says the research found that Imperial's focus on excellence "had served the College well in many ways" but "this dominant focus had a negative impact on wellbeing and social equity".

“There were many
examples given to the researchers of bullying and discriminatory
behaviour…Bullying also intersected with categories such as class,
gender (and gender identity), race, disability and sexual orientation,”
says the review document.

Many of those questioned linked bullying and discrimination with the
“'elite’ white masculinity” of the majority of the staff population,
according to the report. “Examples of misogynistic and homophobic
conduct were given and one interviewee expressed concern that the
‘ingrained misogyny’ at Imperial was so deep that it had become normal,”
it adds.

The report also found that staff felt senior management would turn a
blind eye to the poor behaviour of people deemed valuable to the
university.

Despite a no-tolerance stance on harassment and bullying and support
initiatives for those affected, the research found that staff and
students did not speak up about issues. Participants said they did not
speak out because they feared nothing would be done, that they would
lose their jobs or that it would make matters worse.

“'Speaking up’ also intersected with equalities issues, and women in
particular reported being silenced in various ways,” according to the
review.

Many of those who took part in the research said that the sector-wide
gender initiative Athena SWAN was seen as little more than a “box
ticking exercise” that had “provided a veneer” to hide inequality at the
university.

“There was a feeling from some participants that the College did not
promote equality and diversity at all…The researchers noted that it is
difficult to promote equality and diversity within an institution which
is ‘so profoundly gendered, classed and raced’,” says the document.

Participants reported a lack of community spirit at the university
and said that departments were played off against each other. Staff and
students also said that they felt that asking for support was viewed as
“shameful, weak and evidence of failure”.

In a news article about the report published on Imperial’s website,
Professor Stirling said: “We strongly believe that Imperial is only a
world-class institution because of our talented, diverse community. We
want everyone at the College to feel supported, respected, and able to
excel. That is why we are committed to ensuring gender equality and
eradicating sexist behaviour wherever we can, at all levels.

“These findings remind us that we cannot stand still. We must do better,” he said, adding that the process may not be easy.

“I am confident that by working together we can create as supportive
and inclusive an environment as we can, since that is what all our staff
and students deserve,” he said.

Last year, Imperial carried out a review of its use of performance metrics after the suicide in 2014 of Stefan Grimm,
a professor of toxicology at the institution who had been told he was
“struggling to fulfil the metrics” of a professorial post.

December 04, 2016

Nineteen former faculty members of the psychiatry department at Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine have filed a lawsuit alleging that the college violated their employment contracts and college policy that entitled them to severance payments when it laid them off.

Diana Lawrence, a college spokeswoman, said officials had no comment on the lawsuit.

The dispute is the latest to arise in the wake of the college’s moves to erase what officials had estimated was an annual deficit approaching $30 million at Geisel.

As part of what officials described as a restructuring, Geisel’s entire psychiatry department was transferred to Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Most of the department’s clinical research faculty and staff were let go by the college and hired by the medical center.

“Responsibility for the employment, finances, and operational support for clinical research programs, as well as the clinical practice of psychiatry” was transferred to D-H on July 1, according to the college’s audited financial statement.

The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in Grafton Superior Court by Norwich attorney Geoffrey Vitt, says that in April 2016, Geisel informed the plaintiffs and most other faculty in the psychiatry department that their positions were being eliminated.

“Some, but not all, affected employees” were offered jobs at D-H, the lawsuit says.

D-H is a health system with ties to Dartmouth but has its own financial and governance structures.

Employees who left Dartmouth and went to work at D-H found “material differences in the compensation and benefits” at the health system, the lawsuit alleges.

About 250 employees of Geisel’s psychiatry department and clinical research units got jobs at D-H, according to D-H’s audited financial statement for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

That year, Dartmouth posted a $112 million loss from operations that included a $53.5 million charge for “restructuring expenses” at Geisel for such items as severance pay, endowment transfers, rents and the services of consultants, according to the financial statement.

That cost could rise if the former Dartmouth psychiatry faculty members prevail in their lawsuit.

The former employees who signed on to the lawsuit, including 12 physicians and three full professors, had a combined 211 years of employment at the college, according to their complaint.

Those hired before June 20, 2011, are entitled to two weeks of pay for each year of service, up to 52 weeks, according to the lawsuit, which cites a Dartmouth “separation of employment” policy. The roster of plaintiffs in the lawsuit includes 12 faculty members with service ranging from nine to 27 years. That same policy entitles more recently hired employees to at least two weeks of pay, or to one week of pay for each year of service, up to 26 weeks, the lawsuit says.

The policy guarantees all of those laid off a cash payment equal to the college’s contribution over three months to their health plans, the lawsuit says.

“Nothing in the layoff policies excludes PhD or MD-level employees,” the lawsuit says.

November 29, 2016

A little over
a year ago the Canberra Times, the local newspaper in Australia’s capital
city, ran a storyannouncing that the insurance premiums
paid by the Australian National University (ANU) had risen from around $4
million to $11 million per annum over the last three years.

A statutory authority of the Federal
Government, Comcare provides workplace insurance for several
government agencies, including the ANU. While the premiums it charges them
have on average doubled over this period, the ANU has been singled out for a
particularly dramatic increase.

Why might this have occurred? The advice on Comcare’s website is
unequivocal. It states that the “rate for each employer provides an indication
of the employer's effectiveness in preventing injury or illness and in helping
employees return to work quickly and safely after a work-related injury or
illness.”

When pressed for its own explanation, the ANU however argued that the
insurer was merely trying to recoup recent operational losses.

A detailed,
forensic, rebuttal of ANU’s reasoning would require access to the kind of
sensitive financial and operational information that Universities and Insurers
alike are these days loathe to release. But if we take Comcare’s advice at face
value and conclude that the increase must be explained, at least in part, by a
decline in work safety at the ANU, what might be its source?

University employees are, as a matter of course, at risk of injuris that
arise from such activities as repetitive strain, operating laboratory
equipment, or work-related travel. Such injuries when they occur, however, are
generally well reported and workplace responses can be both swift and
effective. Neither seems to be the case here.

The obvious source of this dramatic growth, then, is psychological injury,
in particular that arising from alleged workplace bullying and abuse. Certainly,
the particular prevalence of such behaviours at
the ANU has been brought to the attention of both the current and previous Vice
Chancellors, and many recent instances have resulted in successful Comcare
claims.

This should
be a matter of considerable institutional and public concern.
Bullied staff can lose much more than their job and career path. They can
also be left with long-term psychological disability. No organisation, let
alone an organisation supported by public funds, and with an explicit public
good as its underlying remit, should consider the prevalence of such a state of
affairs as acceptable.

Staff at the
ANU are especially vulnerable to toxic work practices because, unlike other
Australian Universities, they do not have recourse to an ombudsman or similar
‘disinterested’ arbitrators when there are allegations of internal wrong-doing.

It is all too
easy for senior management and HR staff to become judge, jury, and executioner
when confronted with issues of staff behaviour. Senior Management also has
access to funds to pay out difficult cases, funds that almost invariably come
with associated ‘gagging clauses’ to ensure that the possibility of underlying
managerial and cultural problems remain hidden from further scrutiny.

It is
especially concerning, then, to learn that the University has now been taking
the advice of its Council and actively encouraging claimants
to avoid Comcare altogether. They are being asked instead to approach their
industry superannuation fund for disability cover, effectively bypassing
Comcare’s powers of scrutiny as well as transferring the financial burden back
to the employees themselves. At the same time ANU is also now seeking to remove
itself altogether from the Comcare scheme and self
insure.

This raises
the real spectre of the proverbial turkey being in control of Christmas. There
is a growing perception at the ANU of a nexus between staff who raise matters
of legitimate concern and staff subsequently being confronted with unsafe
managerial behaviours. It suggests that behaviours injurious to the health of
employees are not merely the result of the actions of a few ‘bad eggs’, but are
in fact becoming a normalised tool of University industrial relations. As former
ANU academic, David West, recently
wrote:

The modern university most rewards those who
demonstrate both loyalty to superiors and effective control of subordinates.
Good managers are those who gets things done, which tends to mean that they are
not hampered by either sensitivity for others’ feelings or democratic scruples.
They are assessed according to results rather than the methods they employ, by
ends rather than means. It is little surprise, then, that managers are
sometimes tempted to resort to a more intense regime of control. The rhetoric
of instruction and compliance has largely replaced the more collaborative
discourse of request and consent.

More traditional academic cultures of management by consensus, on the
other hand, requires Universities to select leaders skilled in internal
communication and conflict resolution, and to foster not just mission
statements but also broader corporate cultures that are premised on values of
honesty, competency, and shared vision.

Long abandoned governance structures that used to give academic staff a
controlling stake in deciding who led them, from Head of Department right
through to Vice-Chancellor may have had their critics, but at least they helped
encourage such cultures to survive, if not flourish.

What has tended to arise in their place, as researchers in the US have found,
is based on a much more negative perception of employee capacity,
responsibility and core motivation. Trust in staff is replaced by demands for
constant scrutiny. Managerial appointments are now routinely made from above
without genuine staff consultation, and they are secured by the emergence of
massive salary divide between this new class of academic leaders and the staff
they manage.

A culture of “mobbing” can all too easily follow wherein
apparently ‘non-compliant’ academics can quickly find that they can easily be stripped of the
capacity to function in, let alone, enjoy, their workplace.

To be sure, it is not just the institution as a whole or the individual
victims who suffer from this growing toxicity. We are all the worse for it. The
burden of pay-outs, legal and medical costs, and, indeed, insurance premium
blowouts that inevitably follows is eventually carried by a combination of
increased student fees (or poorer student services) and the general
taxpayer.

Most concerning, however, is the possibility that such an industrial
culture serves also to undermine the capacity of universities to nurture free
thought in our society. In the light of recent political events, that role
has never seemed more important.

Workplace bullying and abuse of staff is a symptom, therefore, of a much
deeper malaise.Our
universities urgently need to apply some of their once hard-won, and much-vaunted,
critical thinking skills to the way they run themselves. And it is time for
senior leadership at the ANU in particular to make safe and easy for the academic
and professional staff they manage to do so.

Join the Bullied Academics Yahoo Group

Useful and informative Links

• Bad Apple Bullies - If you work as a teacher in Queensland, a Bad Apple Bully principal can destroy your health and your career with malicious gossip and secret sticky-notes.

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• Bully Online - Those who can, do. Those who can't, bully. Bully OnLine is the world's leading web site on workplace bullying and related issues which validates the experience of workplace bullying and provides confirmation, reassurance and re-empowerment.

• Suppression of dissent - The general field of "suppression of dissent" includes whistleblowing, free speech, systems of social control and related topics. The purpose of the site is to foster examination of these issues and action against suppression. It is founded on the assumption that openness and dialogue should be fostered to challenge unaccountable power.

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• The Workplace Bullying Institute is the sole United States organization dedicated to the eradication of workplace bullying through public education, help for individuals, employer solutions and legislative advocacy.